Snow-Eaters Anonymous

Examining the Crazy

I haven’t posted for a while. For that, Dear Reader, I am sorry. I have been doing this annoying thing called working. It’s really starting to infringe on my Me Time. I can’t even sleep until 10am and watch movies in the middle of the day! I mean, what the HELL, right?  

So anyway, amidst all this indentured servitude I had a realization as of late. I eat on the run a lot since I’m a sales rep. And I haven’t had much time to prepare meals for myself so I have been frequenting ye ol’ fast food joints (If my mother heard this, she would have just launched into a lecture about nutrition; I am thankful she’s too computer illiterate to read this blog.). So I’ve had some experiences regarding the juxtaposition between company cultures of two that have become my recent staples. And yes, GOD, that was such a work report sentence. I told you I’ve been working a lot. If I start signing my blogs with, “Teamwork makes the dream work!” please get a gun. 

Anyway, I’ve noticed some fundamental differences in the workers at Chic-Fil-A and Dunkin Donuts which I attribute mostly to company culture. And they are downright scary as hell, and simultaneously kind of amazing. They’re two opposite ends of the crazy spectrum. I want to go through the drive through with popcorn and not order anything but just ask them random questions for entertainment value. Let me explain. 

I will start with Chic-Fil-A. Keep in mind, I live outside of New York. It’s very liberal here politically and Chic-Fil-A is known for being owned by religious people. They even close on Sundays entirely. So you aren’t going to find them all over the place here, but where you do find them, it’s such complete and utter culture shock, it’s more like someone slapped you with a chicken rather than made you a sandwich with one.  

Chic-Fil-A Teenage Drive Through Worker (*Sugary sweet tone through speaker*): Well howdy doodie, there, fellow Child of God! How can I be of service to you this fine evening?

Me (*Looking in my back seat to check and see if my friends are going to jump out and say I’m being punked*): Uhhh….

Chic-Fil-A Teenage Drive Through Worker: I can see you haven’t made a decision yet, which is perfectly fine. Please take your time and I am waiting attentively should you have any questions or pressing concerns regarding your chicken.  

Me (*forcing myself not to make any innuendos about “pressing concerns regarding your chicken”, realizing this will be the place that will sue me for sexual harrassment*): Uhhh….

A few minutes later when I can finally recover my brain power enough to formulate thoughts and make a decision, I drive around to the window and the kid pops his head out, creepy smile plastered on his face like he’s auditioning for the Orbitz gum commercial.  

Me (*frightened*): Ahhh!

Chic-Fil-A Teenage Drive Through Worker: Hi ma’am. Fantastic to finally meet you!  

Me: Oh. My. GOD. This is New YORK!  

Chic-Fil-A Teenage Drive Through Worker (*clearly misunderstanding what I meant*): Why yes, it is! What a fine state! I have just moved here and so far I love it. And I’ve already found a church home. Here’s your food, and here’s a flyer for my church. Please join us this Sunday!  

Church Flyer says:

Join us this Sunday for a hand holding sing-along of classic biblical songs! Please bring friends! (Unless they have The Gay. We had an outbreak of it last year.)

Me (*puts car in drive and guns it out of drive through narrowly missing someone who looks suspiciously like Tammy Faye Baker*)

Then the same week I’ll find myself at Dunkin Donuts, which ’round these parts is a staple. Once you get north of New York City, this is pretty much the landscape: trees, highway, Dunkin Donuts, mansions, farmland, more trees, Dunkin Donuts, a lake, yet more trees, some houses, a Dunkin Donuts across the street from another Dunkin Donuts, a grocery store, farmland, and some sweaty guy named Earl trying to get you to buy something you don’t want who is standing in front of a Dunkin Donuts so you’re forced to talk to him because you need coffee. But no matter what Dunkin Donuts you go to, this will be the experience:

Me (*waiting at drive through speaker*)

…ten minutes later….

Me (*still waiting at drive through speaker*): Hello?  

Dunkin Donuts Teenage Drive Through Worker: What?  

Me: What do you mean, ‘what’? I want to order. Can I order?  

Dunkin Donuts Teenage Drive Through Worker (*bored*): I guess.  

Me: Okay, I will take….

(*In the background you hear a bunch of laughing, playing around, the kid at the drive through window starts playfully laughing, not realizing or caring that her mic is picking up what she’s saying.)

Dunkin Donuts Teenage Drive Through Worker: OMG, Carson!!!! Fucking knock it off! Emma, did you just see him grab my phone and moon the camera!? Holy shit!!!!  

Me: Um????? Are you there?

…no response….

Me: Anyone there? I need to order. I have a meeting I have to get to.  

…no response….

Me: OKAY, SERIOUSLY!?!?! CAN MY DRIVE THROUGH PERSON PLEASE COME BACK NOW!?!?!?

Dunkin Donuts Teenage Drive Through Worker (*Sounding bored and slightly inconvenienced*): OMG, relax, I’m HERE. What do you want?  

I grit my teeth, place my order and drive around to the window. The girl who “took my order” (I use that term in the loosest possible sense) rolls her eyes at me as she takes my money, and I see the kid in the back pretending to wipe his ass and then swirl it into my coffee because he’s too dumb to realize I can see him. The girl in the manager’s uniform is on her cell phone having what appears to be a yelling match with her significant other.  

The idiot at the window hands me my coffee and shoves my bag of sugary goodness forceably at my face and I drive away irritated. I get about five miles down the road and I pull over into a parking lot. I can’t wait to eat my croissant doughnut. I love those damn things, it might actually make this trip worth it. So, I open the bag and surprise! They gave me the wrong doughnuts. Oh, and the ones they gave me are stale. FML.  

I don’t go back to complain. It doesn’t even work because Dunkin Donuts is such a staple around here it’s in the very FIBER of our beings. “Nobody cares if YOU don’t like DD, you poor excuse for an East Coast person, you are clearly shameful and the fault is obviously your own!” will be the response I will receive. And sadly, they’re right. One time I ordered five dozen doughnuts for clients at DD and the woman (not a teenager, a woman) outright screamed at me for not calling ahead (I was completely willing to wait for them). I came back anyway. I can’t stay away, the coffee calls to you. If you’ve never had it before, imagine Heaven if it were a consumable liquid and made you excited and energetic. (Way too many dudes had some nasty thoughts there. Knock it off.)

Anyway, as you can see, my area really needs some fast food places that employ the sane. Does that even exist anymore, sane people? I’m not so sure. I’m certainly not one of them, so I don’t even know if I’m qualified to judge. I mean, this blog is called Adventures in Lunacy for fuck’s sake. Hmm.  

Well, there is one thing I do know. Teamwork makes the dream work. (Just not at Dunkin Donuts. Or for gay people at Chick-Fil-A.)

Weird Things I See While Working, Volume 3

The third installment….

Sandwich delivery place, or male prostitution service?   You decide.

Apparently it was too cold for Jesus to rock the tunic and sandals in New England.  He got the wooden cross right, though.

If this were spelled correctly, I would need to buy my mother a house on this street.

This is inside a cab in Manhattan.  Not one sticker, but TWO stickers to remind you not to commit physical assault on the man driving you around.  I mean, that says something right there.  

Caution bored married men and horny teenage boys: do NOT put your penis in here, that’s not what they mean by “Wacker”.  You will be very sorry.  

Dude, I am NOT going rafting here unless Jesus in the picture above is coming along.  Okay, he’s creepy too, so maybe not then either.  

Confederate flag on the front plate, looks like Willie Nelson, and his license plate says this.  I’m thinking he’s not talking about the year.  And he’s probably referring to his sister.  Just a hunch.  

The Ron Jeremy of sign companies.

I’m not a man, but I’m going to speak for my beloved male brethren and say that “exfoliating” and “nads” should never be used in the same sentence, for the safety of all involved.  

Not something I saw while working, something I saw while surfing eBay.  Pay attention to the seller notes.  It’s from China so the grammar isn’t stellar, but “blow powder”?  Wonder how that got through Customs.  Gotta give her points for honesty…or stupidity?

Weird Things I See While Working, Volume Two

Here’s part two of my September post.  If you’re just tuning in now, I collect pictures of really strange and funny things I see while I’m on the road for work.  It keeps me entertained all day.  And man, there are some weirdos out there, or some people who just don’t think when they name shit (or perhaps people who do).  Anyway, without further adieu, here we go.  

The reason most of my male friends wound up in relationships.  

Dammit.  I really had a hankering for Truck for breakfast and then you go and ruin my one chance.  

I can’t.  I just can’t.  

Best part about this was, I shit you not, the woman driving this car was in her 80s.  

Pretty sure that 80 year old lady was on her way here.

In case you’re turned on by…contact lenses?

On special today: every guy I have ever dated.  

City of New Haven, CT.  Keeping it classy since 1638.  

“Your safety pertaining to the vast dangers of little glass balls with fake snow in them that your grandma collects is our priority; not, like, terrorism.  Nobody would commit terrorism!  That’s just mean.  Sincerely, TSA.”

On the side of a road.  Huge painted lizard with mumps rock.  Or rocks.  Because somebody clearly needs a job.  

Should I tell him?  Nahhhh!  I’ll just snap a picture instead.  (I wonder if he’s a plumber?)

I realize “bazaar” and “bizarre” are spelled differently, but they’re pronounced the same.  Wouldn’t you want to name your salon something different so when people ask your customers where they got their hair done, they don’t have to say at (what sounds like) “Bizarre Hair and Nails”?  Because if it looks bad, you know the response will be, “You sure did.” 

Rough and Ready, CA and Intercourse, PA.  Real cities I have visited that sound more like fake locations where porno “plots” are supposed to take place.  
Series of bumper stickers that prove how much I love New Yorkers.  Nobody pretends to like your shit here.  I hate pretenses so it suits me well.  

I’m sure sooner or later I will accumulate more of these again, so stay tuned.  

I Fear for the Future

Me: Hi, I’m calling because I’m receiving no notification on my IPhone home screen of there being any texts in my inbox until I actually open the app.
AT&T tech support: Hi Ma’am. So you can’t hear anything notifying you?
Me: No, I keep the sound on the phone off. I’m saying there is no visual notification on the home screen that there are any texts in the inbox.

Tech support: Okay, so it’s an IPhone, right? Go into the “Sounds” part under settings. And make sure the sound is on for texts.

Me: I think you’re misunderstanding me. On the IPhone messaging app, there is a little red number for the amount of texts you have waiting for you. I turn off the sound on purpose because it’s rude when I’m with clients, so I rely on the visual part to know when I have texts. That little red number isn’t showing up at all, so I don’t know when I have any texts until I open the app and there are a bunch waiting for me I wasn’t aware of.

Tech support: So you can’t hear anything notifying you or anything visual showing you?

Me: (*Sighing*). No, just the visual part is what I’m concerned about.

Tech Support: So, did you just turn the sound off now? That might be why you’re not hearing the texts.

Me: 😫. Um. It was always off. On purpose. I just need to SEE when there’s a text in there.

Tech support: Oh, so you want to SEE the notification of the text messages on the home screen?

Me: Sweet Mother of All that is Holy, yes.

(*Tries a few basic things in the settings menu she keeps screwing up and getting confused and eventually she figures out–stuff that I could have done myself in a lot less time*)

Tech support: Well, Miss Lisa, I have tried everything and concluded that your text messages are not working.

Me: (*thinking*) God help the next generation if this is the average intelligence level we are dealing with here…..

**Sadly, this isn’t at all exaggerated.

Will Molest for Food

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In Protest of Bouquet Tosses

This scene always makes me laugh.  Most women get crazy competitive, dive, and throw elbows for the bouquet like they’re fighting for the last loaf of bread after the apocalypse.  Here, the ladies from SATC seem completely unimpressed by the bouquet toss.  

I, however, take up the complete other end of the spectrum, being completely horrified by it.  I think it’s a stupid, sexist tradition that demeaningly parades all the single girls out in front of the crowd.  The garter belt toss for the guys never seems to garner the same level of humiliation because for men being single is something to brag about.  During the bouquet toss, I always want to grab the mic and bellow, “Step right up, gentlemen, and pick yourself a ripe and desperate one!”  Ugh.  Makes it even worse when you think about why women even carried flowers at weddings to begin with, because it covered their stench during the medieval times when bathing frequently wasn’t an option.  Fantastic.  Here’s a wad of plant reproductive parts so you smell less and maybe some man will finally want you!  He doesn’t have to carry flowers to smell good for you, but you’d better smell good for him.  I know today it doesn’t have the same meaning, but it just brings my hackles up.

The following collection of pictures demonstrates my fear and loathing of the bouquet toss and bouquets in general (for fear I will be forced to catch it) throughout every wedding I’ve been to in the last several decades.  As you’ll see from these pictures, I’m great at masking my emotions.  Good thing I’m not an actor.  I would have been fired a long time ago.  I assure you none of these are staged.  

1982. Four year old me, far right, refusing to smile, not coincidentally while in the presence of bouquet-wielding women. I hadn’t even been subjected to the humiliation of the bouquet toss yet, but clearly I already knew how I felt on the subject. Four year old feminist in the making.

1997. Emily looks truly happy (it was her wedding day after all). I, on the other hand, have an absurdly forced smile, kind of like I’m concentrating really hard on trying not to crap my pants…I mean, cute , exceedingly practical bridesmaid suit I, for once, wish I’d actually kept. (Emily’s my BFF of 26 years, we think alike. She also refrained from doing a bouquet toss. God love her.)

2004. Post bouquet toss. Notice my relief that Karen caught the bouquet. Also notice how I am using the groom as a buffer from the bouquet, with my hands shirking away as I try to pull as far away as possible from the scary bundle of imposed floral symbolic commitment. By the way, Karen looks just as scared holding that bouquet. And for the record, Karen has been with her boyfriend for 20 years and they never married legally.

2010. They didn’t even do a bouquet toss at this wedding and I was actually engaged at this time so I would have gotten out of it, but look at my face. I’m the Maid of Honor, so I have to hold the bride’s bouquet while she says her vows and I’m clearly petrified, like it’s going to come alive and eat me.



2010. Same wedding, same fear.

2012. Bouquet Toss Hell. Look how happy everyone is. “Yay! I’m going to catch the bouquet and my prince is going to ride through the doors of this very reception hall and marry me RIGHT NOW as soon as I catch this bouquet! Now out of my way, bitches!”. And then there’s me, far right in turquoise, sweaty and complaining that some family member made me go out there. “Eh, I will just hang around the periphery and blame my bad reflexes when I don’t even attempt to catch it.”.

2013. Immediately pre-bouquet toss. My cousin decided to take a picture and this was the pretty face I decided to make in protest. That, coupled with the fact that I had a few too many celebratory brewskis as evidenced by my distended stomach just MIGHT be the reason why weddings may be a great place to meet men for everyone else BUT me.

 

So please, do me a big favor.  If you’re getting married and you plan to invite me, don’t be offended if I sneer at your flower arrangements.  It isn’t because I think you have bad taste in flowers, I just think you have bad taste in bringing it near me.  And for the love of all that is holy, please don’t send people to pull me out on the floor when you throw the bouquet.  One of these times, I’m going to snap and start yelling, “Unhand me, you fiend!  I’m not single, I’m married to Jesus!  I’m calling the cops, dammit!  This is kidnapping!” all the while beating people with the glass of whatever alcoholic beverage I’m consuming.  So, unless you want an assault breaking up the most expensive day of your life, I would suggest you take my monetary donation to your happiness, let me drink, and let me be.  

Losing an Argument…with my Dog

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Where There’s Smoke. Or Not.

Last week my smoke alarm went off while I was doing laundry, and there was no smoke so I figured it was broken and took the battery out. Then the next day while cleaning, I went to put the battery back in the alarm and it continued beeping…I then realized it wasn’t just a smoke alarm, it was a carbon monoxide alarm too, and that it had begun beeping while I was running the clothes dryer (which could produce CO). And oh crap, I’d felt sick to my stomach that morning so maybe it wasn’t the 12 new supplements I’d started taking, maybe I had CO poisoning! So I called the fire department. Two enormous fire trucks running the sirens, an ambulance, and a CO tech in a suburban show up on my narrow little street blocking multiple driveways and giving my nosy neighbors, who happily stood on their lawns enjoying the show, the highlight of their weekend. Roughly 15-20 men piled out in big fire gear…you would have thought my house was burning down and 437 children were trapped inside. And there I was, dressed in a baggy sweatshirt with paint stains on it I wear to clean, no make up, hair disgusting and plastered to my head, smelling like an alluring combo of Windex, Pledge, and sweaty person. And I’m talking to this HOT paramedic who tells me how cute he thinks Rosie is (who at that moment is running all over my lawn trying to coerce the men into playing with her while Chili barks her head off), and that he lost his dog in a BREAK UP (read: he’s single). As if I wasn’t already wanting to die of embarrassment, the hordes of firemen come out and tell me it can’t be the dryer because my dryer is electric (I told them I thought it was gas.). Oh, and it wasn’t the CO alarm, it was the fire alarm (which they nicely showed me I would have known if I’d bothered to read the back of the alarm). Obviously, since there was no smoke or fire anywhere, the alarm was malfunctioning, and they came for no reason (deduced that one by myself!). One guy asked me as they went to leave, “You live alone, right?” I nodded, and he smiled knowingly. They were SO nice, but they may as well have patted me on the head and told me what a poor, helpless and clueless woman I am. I felt like saying, “No wait! I bought this house by myself! I pay the bills! I mulched all these planters without help! I can hang shelves! I’m not an idiot!” But, all I did was wave sheepishly as they drove away. So tonight, Ladies and Gentleman, I clearly impressed the brave men of my local fire department and paramedics team with my obvious intelligence and my extreme beauty. As soon as they left, the friggin’ alarm went off again. I almost smashed it with a hammer.

Weird Things I See While Working, Volume One

My full time job is in sales, so I’m out on the road all day.  And man, do I see some weird shit sometimes.  Never fails to entertain me.  So I started snapping some pictures.  Here are a few.  

“Honey, what should we do with this enormous sculpture of an elongated ampersand we have?”  “Well, Dear, why don’t we put it in our tree?  I usually feel the need to make associations between two things when glancing at trees, maybe this will help.”

Um.  Yeah.  I’m not in New York anymore I guess.  (Northern VT culture shock.)

First comes this road. 

Then comes this road!  

Yes, thank you, Sign.  Please stop anything involving Nicholas Cage having the potential to reproduce.  Especially if it’s a three way where he has access to impregnating multiple women at once.  We don’t need any more people who make movies like The Wicker Man and Bangkok Dangerous.  

This is both the way to the hospital and to somewhere the sign makers are hoping you will guess.  

This company needs to have this person’s car parked in its lot every day….

One stop shopping if you’re an alcoholic bootie-shakin’ mouse who is looking for healing from a higher power.  Business must be booming.  

I’m not in Kansas anymore.  Oh, wait, I am.  On a business trip.  No tornado shelters at home!

This guy’s commercial should say, “You should vote for me.  My morals are in tact and the other guy has some major issues with Lust.”

Plastic women’s heads in his trunk.  Let’s hope he’s a hair stylist.  

Only in Manhattan.  

Occupational hazard of every sales rep I know.  Except this wasn’t a sales rep’s car (that I was aware of).  Just some person with a penchant for TMI.   (Please excuse grainy 70s porn picture quality.)

Pretty sure this isn’t an homage to the titmouse. 

Same car as above.  And if announcing to anyone driving past you like knockers enough to broadcast it on your vehicle wasn’t enough, he (it must be a he) had to put a blonde Barbie head on his car antenna.  Her tits are pretty disproportionately large for her body size, so I guess that fits with the whole boob-liking thing.